Cookies That Just Don't Go Away

Flash cookies are becoming the subject of a number of federal lawsuits against media and technology companies. These cookies are different from normal HTML cookies in that they are not cleared via the browser preferences, so a lot of users may be tracked without their knowing. Flash cookies are stored in a separate directory from normal cookies. Flash cookies can even be used to resurrect HTML cookies that have been deleted from a users computer.

This summer five class action lawsuits have been filed in California against media companies like Fox Entertainment  Group and NBC Universal. This issue at hand is consumer and personal privacy--and companies use of this special technology to circumvent users privacy settings.